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Rifle-building parties mix burgers and beer with a chance to sidestep gun laws by building your own weapon.
What’s a party without some brewskies, a few burgers on the grill and a group of buddies just kicking back and assembling some of the world’s deadliest assault weapons from make-shift parts?
That’s the premise of so-called rifle "build parties" that are spawning across the U.S. and in California in particular, where the gun laws are considered to be among the country’s most restrictive.
Although gun ownership makes a person subject to having their firearms registered with the government, build parties provide a setting in which gun aficionados can circumvent that requirement. They’re a convenient way to obtain trendy AR-15 or AK-47 assault rifles without the bureaucratic headaches associated with gun ownership, according to firearms advocates.
That’s because there is no law prohibiting Americans from making their own firearms for personal use, explains Alan Gottleib, founder of the Seattle-based Second Amendment Foundation.
"People get together to build their own rifle, so to speak. They buy the parts, they sit down together, and they assemble them," he said. "Of course the way the laws are written, if you’re making a gun for your own use and it’s not commercial, there’s no law against that."
Lindsay Nichols, attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco, confirmed the legality. "That's right, the law is weak enough that it doesn't apply to making your own gun for your own personal use," she said. "I think what's scariest about these gun build parties is the kinds of guns we're talking about. "
IT'S LIKE KNITTING AND BARBIES
Gene Hoffman, the San Francisco-based chairman of the Calguns Foundation, which promotes "Second Amendment freedom fighting," characterizes the knowledge-sharing gatherings as just another group for hobbyists wanting to learn more about a craft.
"It’s knitting for guys," Hoffman says. "It’s exactly the same thing that gets people to go buy a ’67 Dodge Charger and rebuild it. Call it a very guy thing."
Only in this case, instead of restoring a junkyard car, partygoers are welding, sawing, degreasing and twisting high-powered rifles into shape.
"People put hot dogs on the grill, there are beverages, and it’s a nice Saturday afternoon with some blow torches and a 10-ton press," Hoffman said.
While AR-15s may be hard to obtain at gun shops, they’re fairly easy to construct. For gun builders, according to Hoffman, "the running joke about AR-15s is they’re Barbies for boys."
SIMPLE AND DANGEROUS
In an illustration of just how simple it can be to manufacture an unregistered AK-47, a reporter with the investigative magazine Mother Jones recently posted a report detailing how he joined a build party in Los Angeles to build an AK-47 that is untraceable.
Most of the kits, according to the report, come from stockpiles in former war zones.
Gun-control advocates responded with alarm over the Mother Jones exposé.
"The thought is just horrific," said Elliot Fineman, CEO of the National Gun Victims Action Council in Chicago. "You can’t allow people to walk around with deadly weapons and not expect to have the statistics that we have, which is the highest level of gun homicide and gun-related crime in the developed countries."
Among Fineman’s concerns is how anyone would be able to screen attendees at a build party for potential dangerous felons or even terrorists.
"You have all these hate groups, and ... these people right now can arm themselves with AK-47s. These people are nuts. I don’t want them armed with AK-47s," he said.